1. Technical Field
The present invention generally relates to collaboration services, and more specifically to various collaboration services offered to users of business applications.
2. Related Art
Collaboration services enable users of different computer systems to collaborate (communicate) with each other to seek solutions to problems and share information by various collaborative tools such as email, instant messaging, file sharing, web conferencing, etc. Users of business applications such as Customer Relationship Management, Enterprise, Resource Management, etc use these collaborative tools to communicate with other users of the business application.
A user of a business application may typically perform certain actions with respect to the business application, such as selecting an item from a set of items, completing a form, etc. While performing these actions with respect to the business application the user may often need to communicate with other users of the business application or one or more suitable responders who can respond to any queries the user may have in order to complete the actions. In such case the user may use one of the collaborative tools such as an email, to communicate, and reproduce the relevant business application information, such as the corresponding actions performed by the user with respect to the business application, in the email to set a context for the communication. The user sends such email and receives a response from one or more responders and any other subsequent email messages sent and received for the above context. All such email messages are stored along with the multitude of email messages typically in the user's message box.
One disadvantage with this approach of communication between users of the business application is that for any future reference to the email messages sent and received with respect to the above context, the user may have to spend considerable time searching through the entire message box and correlating the email to the business application and the corresponding actions performed with respect to the business application. This may also discourage the user from re-using the information exchanged in these emails.
Thus there is need for techniques that enable communication between users of business application and reduce and/or eliminate the above-described disadvantages.
In the drawings, like reference numbers generally indicate identical, functionally similar, and/or structurally similar elements. The drawing in which an element first appears is indicated by the leftmost digit(s) in the corresponding reference number.